The University of Michigan Library, The United States of America 

The University of Michigan Library is the university library system of the University of Michigan, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the United States of America.

The Thammasat University Library owns many books published by the University of Michigan Press, a leading academic publisher.

As its website explains,

Consistently ranked as one of the top academic research libraries in North America, the University of Michigan Library makes available an extraordinary array of resources and services.

We have physical locations throughout campus and offer a wealth of resources in traditional as well as digital formats, encompassing more than 8.5 million print volumes and one of the finest digital collections in the world.

Our expert staff are committed to helping patrons tap the full potential of these resources and provide a broad spectrum of assistance for research and teaching. We help students at every step in their educational career and work closely with faculty and graduate students to support their research needs.

How we work

We aspire to high levels of intercultural competence and work to foster inclusion in our work environment, spaces, services, and products. Learn more about our dedication to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, including our diversity strategy plan.

Our organization provides avenues for employee advocacy through the Librarians’ and Staff Forums and we are committed to ongoing assessment to inform our offerings.

Among the latest available statistical highlights, the university library owns over 14 million volumes while all campus libraries together have over 16 million books. There are over 300,000 current serials.

The Mission and Values of the library follow:

Mission

We are a culture and place of sustained and supported innovation. We are indispensable partners in the world-changing work of the university, as we continually reinvent the library as the platform that enables discovery, teaching, learning, health, invention, and creative expression.

Our mission is to support, enhance, and collaborate in the instructional, research, and service activities of faculty, students, and staff, and contribute to the common good by collecting, organizing, preserving, communicating, sharing, and creating the record of human knowledge.

Values

These values are intended to be aspirational while also guiding our day-to-day work and interactions. In sharing these values, we acknowledge the ongoing challenges of operating in a values-informed manner, and recognize that some may be in tension with one another. We also acknowledge these commitments necessitate that we continually learn, and that we move slowly and intentionally.

Excellence

Stay at the leading edge of redefining and reimagining the great research library in the context of an increasingly networked and digital world, while holding true to our broad and enduring mission. An integral part of this work is interrogating the notion of excellence and setting ethical, equitable, anti-racist standards for the research library that recognize who and what are left out of conventional ideas of excellence, innovation, or progress.

Engagement

Deepen our engagement with the core campus missions — discovery, learning, health care, and public service — by supporting and engaging in scholarship and pedagogy that embodies anti-racism as a core value. We understand that as an institution we have to work to be a trusted partner, and we commit to doing that work.

Diversity and Anti-Racism

Develop a community that is inclusive, diverse, and embraces difference. Support the institution’s goals related to anti-racism, and aim to support research that uses ethical approaches that do not further perpetuate harm on communities disproportionately affected by historic and systemic racism and neglect. As much as possible, we will work to dismantle entrenched racism and support work that takes reparative approaches to counteract that historical and ongoing harm.

Interdependence

Embrace interdependence and cultivate opportunities to collaborate internally with each other as “One Library,” locally with campus partners and the communities we are embedded in, across our three campuses, and with our peers nationally and internationally.

Humanity

Embody integrity, compassion, empathy, inclusion, equity, anti-racism, and ethical behavior. Our humanity and commitment to these values will be embedded in every aspect of our services, our technologies, and our interactions with our communities.

Strategic directions and objectives include:

Strategic directions

Over the next five to seven years, we will:

• Explore new ways to support the whole lifecycle of scholarship.
• Continuously evolve and reimagine user-centered services.
• Continuously improve our physical and digital spaces.
• Affirm our commitment to and rethink our definition of collections.
• Cultivate a caring, compassionate, and inclusive workplace climate.
• Practice intentional and strategic planning.
• Hold space for difficult and challenging conversations that will move our organization toward change.
• Acknowledge and confront the structural racism that shapes our interactions with colleagues, patrons, and the larger community.

Strategic objectives

In support of our strategic directions, over the next few years we will:

• Use coordinated, cross-Library data gathering and analysis to support high-quality service provision and a positive workplace climate; when planning assessment and analytics projects, collecting and reporting on data, and acting on findings we will be guided by the Library’s strategic directions and our commitments to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.
• Advance our digital scholarship service through strategic cross-divisional collaboration to develop infrastructure, policies, and best practices that work towards just, equitable, and inclusive outcomes.
• Take a holistic, multidisciplinary approach in strengthening the library’s commitment to advancing open research and scholarship, focusing on the research & scholarly communication life cycle, a diverse range of research outputs, and inclusive attention to disciplinary cultures and conventions.
• Advance our instruction programs, resources, infrastructure, teams, and modes in response to campus directions and ongoing assessment with attention to diverse pedagogical needs and equitable learning opportunities.
• Develop, cultivate, and support new publishing models with a particular emphasis on monograph publishing and open infrastructure.
• Enhance our collection services through increased coordination with the Big Ten libraries, continued exploration of new agreements with publishers, greater investment in fulfillment services, and attention to social justice.
• Investigate, articulate, and implement a strategy for library discovery that keeps user needs at the center; acknowledges the scope of our collections and partnerships; and enables progress toward continuing excellence and sustainability in the dynamic discovery landscape.
• Make more visible what we offer in order to elevate campus awareness of our services, spaces, and collections.
• Invest in individual growth, excellence in leadership and organizational development toward positive impact on organizational culture and climate.
• Prepare for and transition to a new Library Services Platform (LSP), Alma.
• Build a print preservation repository.
• Articulate and implement digital preservation and access strategies that serve to harmonize our services, technologies, policies, and commitments to long term preservation of the scholarly and cultural record.
• Support our commitment to accessibility by investing in strategic partnerships and opportunities that advance library accessibility and lead the university toward equitable access.

Library blogs include such popular webpages as Lost in the Stacks, about interesting items and hidden gems from the library’s collections; and Student Stories from and about library student employees and interns;

The library’s Special Collections Research Center features a Children’s Literature Special Collection; Early Printed Books; European History Special Collections; History of Astronomy and Mathematics; History of Medicine; Islamic Manuscripts; the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive; Jewish Heritage Collection; Joseph A. Labadie Collection of books, pamphlets, ephemera, and more chronicling anarchism, political and social movements, and related topics; Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts; Philippine American History Special Collection; Screen Arts Mavericks and Makers; and Transportation History.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)